We're six months into our 14th season, and for those of us who have been here since the beginning, it can be difficult to recall which wave of players the current surge represents. We've had many over the years.

Last Wednesday at the Red Lion in the Lincoln Square, the club played its 382nd game, a contest pitting players from three distinct waves: Don Glass and Ted McClelland, vets who joined the club in our fourth season; Brandon Fogel and David Spanos, the vanguard of the New Guard, who joined in Season 10, along with  Bryan Pravel, who started playing with us the next year; and two members of the current wave, Brian MacWilliams, playing in his second club game--and second game ever--and Braden Lenz, who joined us in Season 13.

For most of the evening, it was the newcomers' night. MacWilliams was holding his own in the East, and Lenz led everyone as Germany--no easy feat considering that one of his Western neighbors was three-time defending Weasel of the Year Brandon Fogel. 

The holidays can be dark days for the Poultry of Europe, what with all the feasting and leftovers and general overeating. But the New Year promised a fresh start for Turkey, and guided by the stern hand and steely resolve of #Season14 newcomer Eber Condrell, the yellow pieces splattered the clean slate with the blood of their enemies.

After a two-month holiday hiatus, the Weasels were back in action last week for Red Wednesday at the Red Lion in Lincoln Square. It was just the fifth the game of the season and first since November 14, and a few of the players played as if they were still sleeping off a family gorging. But not Condrell. When Italy employed the Byrne Opening--Venice to Tyrolia, Rome to Venice, named for the postal hobby's fiercest practitioner, the late Kathy Byrne Caruso--and a Western Triple swamped Russia and the Mediterranean, Condrell seized these opportunities to ruthlessly gobble every lightly defended dot he could reach. He finished eating all three of his neighbors in 1904, and belched his way into a 14th dot by game's end. It was an impressive blitzing of three of the club's veteran players. 

Game No. 381 ended by time limit after the Fall 1906 turn in the following center counts: